Faculty Senate Chair Rex Strange brought up a reported issue concerning emails not being delivered properly to students.

He reported the concern to the senate at its meeting March 4, and said he was communicating with Information Technology Director Richard Toeniskoetter.

“Many of us do not know that students encounter a ‘clutter box,’” Strange said. “Apparently it’s a spam filter. Instructors are using Blackboard to send emails with issues to students and that’s ending up in the clutter box.”

Several senators said they were unaware that any of these email issues were occurring.

Toeniskoetter said ‘clutter’ is a feature Microsoft recently implemented in the cloud email system.

“They attempt to filter email that’s not important to you into a separate folder,” he said. “We can argue it does not do that job.”

Toeniskoetter said his department worked to install a bypass from the clutter box for Blackboard emails or emails from usi.edu accounts.

“One of the faculty members brought the issue to us and I had to go find a student to see it,” he said. “Now (the bypass) is one of those things that’s hard to check for sure if it’s working.”

He reached out to Faculty Senate to see if any senators have feedback, but Toeniskoetter hasn’t received anything back.

“We would have to prove (the bypass) negative,” he said. “We’ll assume it’s working until someone has an email that doesn’t work.”